32 
BSH Report No. 56 
Summary and Conclusion 
The presented study focussed on investigating possibilities of environmental 
forensic analysis for source identification of paraffin spills using and enhancing 
methods regularly applied in oil spill environmental forensics. 
The results show that GC-FID analysis provides data which are quite usable for 
categorizing and characterizing paraffin wax samples, as the bell shape 
formed by the n-alkanes in the chromatograms are of excessive uniqueness. 
Considering Instrumental variations, the peak-based features of RSD (relative 
standard deviation) and CD (critical difference) are to be determined in order 
to confirm a matching of samples or tell them apart. 
The analysis of biomarkers by GC-MS, which Is efficiently used in oil spill Iden 
tification, Is of very limited use for paraffin-wax characterisation, since in paraf 
fin-wax, the biomarker signature is too much altered or almost completely 
depleted. This renders a direct analysis useless without the processing of ana 
lytical data or enhanced sample treatment. 
Two paraffin wax samples from the same product mixture or from the same 
tank should be, per definition, of a similar composition. If this is the case, the 
raw material from which the wax was produced should consequently be of the 
same origin as well. This can be very reliably confirmed by GC-IRMS analysis. 
Compound-specific or bulk analysis should both confirm such a relation. 
In a case however, where paraffin waxes have very similar bell shapes but are 
of different origin (which can easily occur with such refined products), GC-FID 
and -MS would be unable to detect this difference and would lead to a 
false-positive match. Only IRMS analysis provides this crucial information. 
Such a difficult scenario highlights the valuable augmentation of IRMS to the 
standard techniques of GC-FID and -MS. 
Nevertheless, IRMS Is an expensive and labour-intensive technique compared 
to GC-FID or -MS systems. More so, the technique needs considerable harmo 
nisation efforts before It can be reliably applied: The comparison of the abso 
lute values of the 13C-Content of identical samples measured by the IAEA and 
by NFI lead to a difference of more than 3%o. Consequently, this material would 
be considered to be of a different origin and as a result as not being the same. 
However, even with its use In routine analysis being currently unlikely, IRMS 
represents an option to be considered In difficult cases and might provide to 
be a powerful parameter. 
The all-over conclusion matrix shows a good accordance between the used 
techniques (Tab. 6).